Better Call Saul’s Night-Two Ratings Aren’t Half Bad

February 10, 2015 9:08 PM

8
0

The Nielsen news continues to be good for AMC’s Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul. In its first appearance in its regular 10 p.m. Monday time slot last night, the Bob Odenkirk series drew 3.4 million viewers and notched a 1.6 rating among viewers under 50, good enough to tie ABC’s Castle and CBS’s NCIS: Los Angeles for first place in the younger demo. The second episode of Saul also bested last summer’s series premiere of FX’s new Sunday drama The Strain in both viewers and adults under 50, as well as the 2013 series premiere of A&E’s Bates Motel (which also airs Mondays at 10). Of course, what Saul didn’t do was bring along everyone who checked out the show’s Sunday series premiere, which attracted a cable record 3.4 rating among viewers under 50.

Monday’s follow-up Saul lost half of that audience, which under some circumstances would be cause for alarm. But the Saul debut was artificially inflated by its positioning behind The Walking Dead, TV’s No. 1 show among viewers under 50; AMC execs always knew they’d be renting viewers for Saul by sl...